Connect, co-create context, express yourself, and heal.

Stories humanize and integrate life experiences while fostering the connection we all need to thrive.

Healing-Centered, Community Storytelling Grants

FirstPerson Narratives Foundation (FirstPerson) fosters Healing-centered Engagement (HCE) within community-driven storytelling initiatives designed with and for adults who grew up experiencing Family System Trauma (FST).

We use Family System Trauma (FST) as a general term to describe the multilayered impacts of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and chronic stress within parent-child relationships. FST is intergenerational, and can result in relational, attachment, and developmental trauma.

At FirstPerson, we recognize that life's challenges, particularly those experienced in childhood, are not determinants of destiny but opportunities for growth and transformation. Our perspective is grounded in our lived experience of FST and the understanding that humans possess an innate capacity to persevere and flourish, regardless of their early experiences.

Through grant-making, we co-create and fund community-driven implementation of the FirstPerson Ensembles model. Ensembles provides tangible tools and practices to scaffold and structure community learning. This approach supports individuals (Players) as they navigate their life stories with a holistic, whole-system view, addressing integration, processing, cognitive, relational, social, physical, and health needs.

We see our Players as resourceful individuals who have navigated complex life mazes, developing unique strengths and coping strategies along the way. Our approach celebrates this resilience while acknowledging that healing happens best in community, not in isolation (Masten, 2014).

“Self-healing is a fundamental human capacity that anyone can cultivate, and understanding how we survived can help us heal.”
Jen Grob D'Souza, Founder

Communities use our model as a springboard to co-create safe, nurturing spaces where Players can explore healing-centered storytelling initiatives that foster:

Internal resourcing. Players cultivate the capacity to explore, resolve, and integrate their own self-healing through activities such as theatre games, improvisation, embodied movement, music, and expressive art-making.

Contextual understanding. Using experiential learning strategies, Players gain insights into their lived experiences and ancestral influences, leveraging resilience resources and post-traumatic growth.

Self-identity restoration. Practices cultivate agency in rebuilding and reclaiming one's sense of self.

Brain-body integration. Activities engage both emotional and body-focused/sensory-motor levels to promote integrative experiences and holistic healing.

Intergenerational healing. Players expand skillsets using tools that can disrupt the cycle of intergenerational trauma and generate positive change for future descendants.

Peer Support and Collaboration. Ensembles foster supportive communities where Players can connect, share, and learn from one another. Lived Experience Leadership emerges to seed local empathetic, contextually-informed, and healing-centered workforces that can contribute to broader social change.

NEAR Science integration. NEAR Science (Neuroscience, Epigenetics, ACEs, and Resilience) findings are incorporated to contextualize, normalize, and de-stigmatize FST experiences.

Changing the narrative. Players work within healing-centered, ethical storytelling and asset-framing principles to shift stories from problem-centered to person- and strength-centered. The voice of Lived Experience transcends stigma and pathology.

About

Feeling safe improves how we feel, think, and operate. FirstPerson generates contextually relevant Lived Experience Leadership (LExL) programs where people can connect, explore, and practice healing-centered storytelling initiatives.

Co-Creation Grant Offerings

FirstPerson Narratives co-creates and funds Lived Experience Leadership within trauma-informed and healing-centered, community-driven personal storytelling programs in the United States. Grants are invitation-only, and range from $5,000 to $100,000 per grantee.

Healing Is Possible, But Not Accessible.

The Problem:

Experts across disciplines agree on how FST can harm individuals, what people need to heal, and how to prevent adversity from being passed to the next generation. However, many of us impacted by less-than-ideal childhods lack access to integrated, healing-centered solutions that address the relational, attachment, and neurobiological factors at the root of FST.

FirstPerson Ensembles Model

Our model supports the implementation of trauma-informed and healing-centered principles and practices into community-driven personal storytelling programs for adults who grew up experiencing Family System Trauma.

Every Body Has a Different Story

Grantees use the FirstPerson Ensembles framework as a springboard to ensure culturally and contextually grounded implementation and experiences that are enlivened with context, language, music, images, and stories that connect shared cultures across generations.

Co-create Context

The FirstPerson Ensembles Model

Connect & Build Safety

Express Yourself & Heal

Players work together to understand their experiences in a broader context. Players explore visual thinking and story framing techniques to map out, deconstruct, make meaning of their past experiences. Practices fortify essential skills like communication, critical thinking, perspective-taking, collaboration, self-direction, reinvention, and more! This co-created context expands our capacity for verbal expression.

Players find their voice through expressive art-making. We explore the spectrum of ways to reconstruct and re-storying our legacy with a renewed sense of agency, purpose, and belonging. Players take control of their narrative.

We begin by co-creating a sense of safety and connection within the group. Players explore and expand internal resources that support their capacity to center themselves and stay grounded in the present.

Let's Connect

Join us in co-creating healing-centered storytelling initiatives. We seek to learn from and collaborate with thought leaders, wellbeing practitioners, teaching artists, program advisors, and other contributors involved in healing-centered engagement. Contact us to learn more, fill out the form, or email development@first-person.org